Dissolution or Physical recycling: Solvent-based recycling
‘Dissolution or Physical Recycling’ is one way to recycle plastic waste. In this process, sorted plastic waste is dissolved using solvents to extract the polymers and create new recycled plastic products.
How does it work?
The dissolution recycling process starts with an initial step where plastic waste is sorted and prepared for further processing. The dissolution process uses some heat and solvents to dissolve plastic into a solution of polymers and additives that it was originally made from. In the following step the additives are separated from the polymers before recovering the polymers from the solution. During the dissolution process the structure of the polymer is not altered. In a final step, new additives are added to polymers to produce the new recycled plastic.